“The great thing about unrequited love is it's the only kind that lasts.”

“One of the best things about having children is that it enables you to have the same loving memories as another person - you can summon the same past. Two flashbacks but with a single image.”

“People say that time is a great healer. Which people? What are they talking about? I think some feelings you experience in your life are written in indelible ink and the best you can hope for is that they fade a little over the years.”

“The thing about teen idol," Louisa is saying, "is he morphs through time. The boys' faces and names change, but the emotional need they fulfill, well, that never changes.”

“My mother thinks some disaster has happened if I don't return a phone call from her within twenty-four hours. It's hard to explain that the only chance to return the call will be when a disaster ISN'T happening, stormy being the prevailing climate with surprise outbreaks of calm.”

“‎"There is an easy standoff between the two kinds of mother which sometimes makes it hard for us to talk to each other. I suspect that the non-working mother looks at the working mother with envy and fear because she thinks that the working mum has got away with it. And the working mum looks back with fear and envy because she knows that she has not. In order to keep going in either role, you have to convince yourself that the alternative is bad. The working mother says, because I am more fulfilled as a person I can be a better mother to my children. And sometimes, she may even believe it. The mother who stays home knows that she is giving her kids an advantage, which is something to cling to when your toddler has emptied his beaker of juice over you last clean t-shirt.”

“In death, we are not defined by what we did or who we were but by what we meant to others. How well we loved and were loved in return.”